Qualcomm's new flagship processor comes in small, medium, and large. The processor giant, whose chips power most of the non-Apple smartphones in the U.S., showed off its 64-bit, octa-core Snapdragon 810 processor at a demo event in New York yesterday.

The Snapdragon 810 won't appear in consumer devices until next year, although it may be early next year; rumors (via TechnoBuffalo) say that the 810 will power a refresh of Samsung's Galaxy Note 4, the upcoming Galaxy S6, and next year's HTC One model. For now, Qualcomm showed off three form factors for its developer unit: a tablet, a phone, and a slim 6-inch phablet. It showed the phone and tablet last year with its Snapdragon 800, but the phablet is new, showing that Qualcomm wants developers to think about devices like the Snapdragon 805-powered Google Nexus 6.

Qualcomm's innovations tend to go stepwise - you don't see a lot of radical shifts. Rather, there's steady improvement. We started hearing about 4K video with the Snapdragon 800 chip, two generations ago. Qualcomm's pushing it hard now. User-generated content and high-res tablets will drive 4K video adoption, Qualcomm said. The H.265 codec will cut file sizes. Memory prices will drop over the next year, the company says, and high-speed 802.11ac and 802.11ad wireless support will let you stream that high-res video to your TV.

There's some optimism and some pivoting in that view. Qualcomm really wants to drive 4K, because 4K requires powerful processors. But the professional media industry hasn't been terribly enthusiastic or fast-moving when it comes to 4K content, and that has meant we haven't seen a lot of 4K TVs selling. So if Qualcomm's going to push 4K, it needs to be in a mobile-centric context. Let's note that didn't work with 3D, but we already have tablets and phones with 2K screens, and 4K screens are probably coming next year. If you're buying a higher-end Android phone next year, expect 4K to be part of the package.

Note that I'm saying "Android." Apple, so far, doesn't seem to have been convinced of the value of 4K, although the existence of its new 5K iMac may change that. And Qualcomm wouldn't commit to the Snapdragon 810 powering devices for Windows, BlackBerry, Firefox, or any other non-Android platform. It didn't count them out, though.

I'm surprised that Microsoft didn't have a presence in the Snapdragon 810 demos, but that probably has more to do with syncing up with the upcoming Windows 10 announcements on Jan. 21 than anything else. Qualcomm is the exclusive chipset provider for Microsoft's Windows Phone lineup right now.

Qualcomm had some other impressive demos, most notably a brilliant telephoto trick from partner Core Photonics. As the Snapdragon 810 has two image processors, Core Photonics' camera design puts a standard wide-angle lens and a 3x zoom lens into the camera of a phone or tablet. By combining the two lenses, it can create a virtual optical zoom with no moving parts, which is far sharper than a traditional digital zoom. That's really neat.

The chipmaker's Fluence audio software could really improve speakerphone quality. Qualcomm showed how it does excellent directional noise cancellation, for instance focusing on your voice coming from one direction but not background noise coming from another.

How is the actual Snapdragon 810 hardware? I played with all three developer devices, and, well, they're buggy. It's no wonder a Qualcomm rep appeared over my shoulder to prevent me from running benchmarks. The phones and phablets weren't on the Internet, and as for the tablet, well, let's just say the Web browser didn't feel terribly optimized and leave it at that.

It'll be interesting to see how the Snapdragon 810 performs, because there was a lot of debate about the chip's design when it was first announced in April. ExtremeTech pointed out that while Qualcomm has made its name with its custom Krait cores, the 810 uses off-the-shelf ARM designs, likely to speed up production time. Even then, rumors said (via Android Authority) that the chip suffered some bug-related delays.

Ultimately, this hands on didn't say much about the Snapdragon 810's true performance. We hope to see more solid Snapdragon 810 devices soon.

About the Author

PCMag.com's lead mobile analyst, Sascha Segan, has reviewed hundreds of smartphones, tablets and other gadgets in more than 13 years with PCMag. He's the head of our Fastest Mobile Networks project, hosts our One Cool Thing daily Web show, and writes opinions on tech and society.
Segan is also a multiple award-winning travel writer. Other than ... See Full Bio

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